Farmer/Shadowland

Shadowland by William Arnold is one of the few books available about Frances Farmer. Farmer was an actress in the late 1930s and early 1940s that was institutionalized, and as some believe, this was due to her political beliefs rather than mental illness. Today, Shadowland is still sought after and is somewhat hard to get a hold of, but is a valuable book as it sheds light on a captivating actress and what happened to her.Shadowland is an attention-grabbing book that is hard to put down and reads quickly. This book is basically an outline of William Arnold's progress as he attempts to solve the mystery of Frances Farmer. Arnold recounts the life of Farmer from various documents and personal interviews of people that claim to have known her. More than half of this book is about Farmer's life before she was institutionalized, and only after 150 pages does it get into her psychiatric involvement.This book makes a great companion to Farmer's autobiography. Although Arnold does point out information that shows the autobiography may be inaccurate, for the most part, Shadowland does not entirely contradict the autobiography. Shadowland is an important book to read for anyone interested in knowing more about what happened to Frances Farmer.

I read this book having first read the powerful book (please read this book), "Will There Really Be A Morning?". A lot of the questions I was left with following my completion of that book were answered by reading "Shadowland" and I think it is a well-written book that is worth the time to find and read. Frances Farmer's story is tragic and thought-provoking and Arnold's book gives a comprehensive look at Frances triumphs and tragedies. I would recommend reading "Will There Really Be A Morning?" by Frances Farmer (partially) (both books are easy to find on Ebay) before reading this book. It will make the story more interesting and easier to follow.

This is not only a good book about Frances, but a good historical book of American Psychological History. This book gives good detail of what American psycho doctors have insanely done in a Nazi fashion to people in a supposed effort to cure then. This is a real tragidy. I recommend that everyone who is a student of psychology, historian, and/or just love intresting books to read this book.

From the late 1930's to the early 40's, Frances Farmer was the most promising young Hollywood star and a gifted performer on the New York stage. Blessed with a sharp intellect, exceptional acting talent, and stunning beauty, she shot to the top of stardom in what seemed a Cinderella story and fascinated millions of fans. However, Frances Farmer was a strong-willed, independent thinker at a time when such behavior, especially by a woman, was not generally accepted. She quickly clashed with her studio, the Broadway community, and the public over her associations with socialist and human rights causes. In both high school and college, her controversial religious perspective and politcal leanings had made powerful enemies in her hometown of Seattle, Washington with the political right and anti- communist vigilantes. After becoming disallusioned with both Hollywood and Broadway, she encountered legal troubles with convictions for drunk driving and assault, though never allowed legal defense or advice. That this violatiion of basic rights could occur in the United States is almost unbelieveable. Yet, no evidence of intoxication was ever presented, and the assault on a female co-worker may very well have been caused by abuse of amphetamines, ironically recommended by a doctor to control her weight and available over the counter at a time when no one knew of the potential side effects. Instead of serving her jail sentence, she mysteriously found herself forced into a public mental institution in her hometown known as Steilacoom - a place so brutal that it should go down in history as the equivalent of any Nazi concentration camp. The life of Frances Farmer is inseparable from the issues of psychiatric abuse of mental patients, freedom of religion and politics, and freedom of speech because it was her opinions and words that were used as a basis for her alleged insanity. In essence, she was punished for her views and her outspokeness with six years of institutionalization in a hellhole incredibly understaffed, where the "worst" cases (those considered too anti-social, violent, psychotic, criminals, senile, and retarded children) were housed in a huge, grossly crowded room with a dirt floor and left to fend for themselves. Nude patients screamed, cried, and fought with each other and the rats for the food that was routinely thrown on the floor for them - the same floor covered in urine and excrement. Patients took sexual liberties with each other, the strong terrorizing the weak, and many patients suffered from malnutrition and near starvation. The few interns who worked this dungeon were prison inmates on a work program, who supplemented their incomes by prostituting female patients, mostly to the soldiers at the local army base. (Some of the same soldiers glorified as heroes for WWII when their crimes made them unworthy of even being spit on). In fact, the institution was commonly referred to as Seattle's whore

The author is on the staff of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer (the star was a native of Seattle, spending her childhood and much of her later life there) and here he weaves a spellbinding tale encompassing the golden era of Hollywood, primitive psychiatry and the depravities of insane asylums, her artistic triumphs onstage with the Group Theatre and their shameful exploitation of the Farmer name, industry parties in Malibu and the unconscionable 'star status' that she was accorded by the health care professionals to whom she had been entrusted following her revolt after colliding with the Los Angeles judicial system (on charges arising from a minor traffic violation). There is an undeniable undercurrent throughout the first half of this book to the effect of "there, but for the grace of God, go I...". Because there is no official record of a lobotomy having been performed in 1949, we are left to decide for ourselves if the actress and University of Washington alum was, in fact, subjected to this ultimate indignity: after the first 75 pages, it is easy to understand why Kenneth Anger (Hollywood Babylon) was moved to identify her as that town's foremost victim. Arnold's thorough treatment of the forces that led to the powerfully tragic and errant commitment of this enormously talented, left-wing Paramount and Broadway star is devastating to read and impossible to put down. That someone could ascend to the pinnacle of success and tumble so quickly and easily into the abysmal squalor of the ancient Fort Steilacoom Hospital, with it's dirt floors, rats and ice baths that were representative of mental health care in Washington State in the 1940's, is hair-raising and remains deeply troubling today. This was reverse-serendipity, times ten. Frances Farmer was an unusually gifted actress, touted loudly throughout Hollywood after her stunning performance in Samuel Goldwyn's 1936 classic, Come And Get It, as " ...the next Garbo". She possessed natural beauty, with a sleek jawline and cheekbones that photographed with luminescence. More important, she was a strong and independant woman, dedicated to the craft of stage acting and woefully out of place in the old studio system of Hollywood in the late 30's. Frances Farmer's meteoric rise continued despite her own efforts; to want to turn one's back on all that stardom in the world's movie capital represented at the time was adjudged as insanity by one too many - her Mother, (who was, herself, mislead at a critical juncture early in the committal process). This is also a case study in what can happen when one worse-case scenario unbelievably collides with another and yet another... it is impossible not to be touched by the plight of this dedicated woman who I refuse to label as 'tragic' - that in itself is tragic, and her lasting achievements and legacy far surpass such an unkind label. She was a devoted and talented artist who stood her ground for laudable principles, and lost. Arnold chronicles her odysse